What's Your Big Idea?

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David

‘It’s waffle morning!” 24-year-old Ben Kaufman exclaims as he bounds into a New York City kitchen. Two twentysomethings are already at the counter; one plugs in a waffle maker; the other mixes a bowl of batter. “You have to melt the butter first,” Kaufman says, “or you won’t be able to stir it in.”

This isn’t a cooking class, or a hipster brunch—it’s serious business. Kaufman founded Quirky.com 15 months ago with an ambitious idea: to reinvent the business of invention. Each week, dozens of amateur Edisons nationwide submit ideas for gadgets like the Ultimate Waffle Iron Kaufman is working on today. (Easy to clean! No more batter dripping down the sides!) Next, hundreds of online community members (or “Quirks”) weigh in on the products and vote for their favorites. Kaufman and his team cull the results, sort out potential patent conflicts or production problems, then make the final call on the week’s winning thingamabob—which, if all goes well, will become Quirky’s newest product. Kaufman calls the process “social product development.”

“The world needs this right now,” Kaufman says. “There are tons of people at home with no way to get their product ideas out to the world, and we can put the pieces together.” He hopes that by bringing the best ideas to market, he can become a new kind of mogul himself. “I want Quirky to be the Procter & Gamble of the 21st century,” he says. So far, venture capitalists have invested $7.5 million.

Kaufman’s entrepreneurial journey started young. As a precocious 8-year-old in Huntington, N.Y., he created a Power-Point presentation that won his mom a major account with a cosmetics company—and earned him a $2000 kickback. Ben’s next venture: charging his parents’ friends for loading CDs onto their iPods. “He was a very unique child,” says his mother, Mindy Kaufman. “He was always thinking up his next business.”

At 18, Kaufman thought up his first invention: the Song Sling, an iPod Shuffle case with retractable headphones. His parents re-mortgaged their home to fund production, and Song Sling won a coveted “Best of Show” award at the MacWorld convention for fans of Apple computers. The Kaufmans kept their house, and Ben became a successful CEO. He dubbed his company Mophie.

In 2007, Kaufman returned to MacWorld with an even more novel idea: He handed out sketch pads and asked people to come up with their own inventions. The winning design—an iPod case/bottle opener—became Mophie’s newest product. The instant feedback and collaboration electrified him. “I realized that every product should be developed this way,” Kaufman says. He sold his company and left Champlain College in Vermont to focus full-time on Quirky.com. Less than two years later, he’s brought more than 50 inventions to market, from a modular pocket knife with removable attachments to a self-cleaning broom and dustpan.

To weed out the time machines and other impossible gizmos, Quirky charges $10 for each idea submitted. Still, crazy concepts get floated. (Edible frisbee, anyone?) Quirks debate the pros and cons of each and cast their votes at the end of the week. When I submitted my idea for FindIt!—a GPS–powered location device for lost keys—it was quickly dismissed. (“So sorry,” posted one Quirk. “Three Christmases ago I got this from RadioShack.”)

Even if a product gets community approval, it will only make it to market if enough Web surfers pre-order it to cover production costs. “This is where we find out if a good idea is a good product,” Kaufman says. “The world doesn’t need more junk.” In fact, less than a third of Quirky products get made.

Jeff Scholen, a 41-year-old medical-device manufacturer from Atlanta, spent 10 minutes sketching an idea for a power-cord holder, then submitted it to Quirky. The PowerCurl has since sold more than 6500 units and netted Scholen about $6000. Michael McCoy, a 29-year-old mechanical engineer from Hampton, Va., is Quirky’s most successful inventor so far, netting around $30,000 since his iPad case—the Cloak—went on sale. “I’m going to pay off some bills and then submit some other ideas,” he says.

Quirky does have its skeptics. “It can be viable for making niche products, but the question is whether they produce something that has mass appeal,” says analyst Michael Gartenberg of the technology-research firm Altimeter Group. Kaufman is confident that his business will continue to grow, but he is also enjoying the moment. “This is so much fun,” he says, munching on a waffle. “I come to work every day and make stuff!”